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Sunday, 1 May 2011

Saudi Arabia’s oil production may reach 9 million barrels per day on average in 2011 as global demand increases, said an official at National Commercial Bank, Saudi Arabia’s largest bank by assets.

Average prices for Saudi’s crude are expected to reach $95 per barrel, Said A. al-Shaikh, the Jeddah-based lender’s senior vice president and its chief economist, said in a telephone interview today.

Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter, reduced its output by 800,000 barrels per day in March after raising it to over 9 million in February, Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said last month. The kingdom produced 8,292,100 barrels a day in March and it will probably go a “little higher in April,” he said.

E*Trade Financial Corp has been fined $200,000 by a regulator in the United Arab Emirates for breaching anti-money laundering controls, the local regulator said on Sunday.

Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA), which is the regulator for the Nasdaq Dubai bourse, said it fined E*Trade for failing to obtain sufficient evidence of its clients' source of wealth and for not providing adequate address details for some of its clients.

Local bourses slipped at the close as investors took a wait-and-see approach ahead of companies that are yet to report their financial statements for the first quarter.

"There's a little bit of consolidation with markets needing a catalyst," said Haissam Arabi, the chief executive of Gulfmena Investments in Dubai. "We're still waiting for bluechips to report their earnings, so it's natural to see stocks moving sideways."

The Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange General Index was down 0.1 per cent to 2,690.87 points. Sorouh Real Estate was down 0.7 per cent to Dh1.41 a share after the company disclosed that its profits declined 50 per cent last week.

Dubai’s ruler amended a law to allow the emirate’s $20 billion fund to offer loans to non-government entities as the Persian Gulf business hub battles a debt crisis.

The Dubai Financial Support Fund "will grant loans and credit facilities to government and non-government entities," according to a statement posted on Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum’s website today. Any entity that "wishes to benefit from the fund should submit all necessary assurances to honor their obligations to the fund," it said.

Dubai set up the fund in July 2009 to help state-owned companies after the global financial crisis froze credit markets and led to a slump in the emirate’s property industry. The sheikhdom raised $10 billion by selling bonds to the United Arab Emirates’ central bank in February 2009. It also raised another $10 billion from bond sales to Abu Dhabi government and state- controlled banks to complete the fund, which was set up with advice from N.M. Rothschild & Sons Ltd.

Jeweller Damas International said on Sunday that it has extended the payment date for 600 million dirhams ($163.4 million) owed by its founders, the Abdullah brothers, by another month.

The deadline is now May 31, Damas said, adding that an agreement with the brothers to liquidate certain assets to repay the company had been approved by all but one bank creditor so far. Damas did not name the lender.

Last month, the Dubai-based jeweller extended the payment date to April 30 to give more time for parties involved in the the agreement to sign up.

Dubai Aerospace Enterprise Ltd., the aviation-services and leasing company that in March canceled an order for 42 planes from Airbus SAS, earned a $10.4 million profit in 2010 compared with a $21.1 million loss a year earlier.

Dubai Aerospace, set up in 2006 with the aim of becoming one of the world’s biggest airplane lessors, ordered 100 aircraft each from Airbus and Boeing Co. in 2007, only to scale back expansion after its financial situation weakened during the recession in 2008 and 2009.

If you drive out on the highway towards Abu Dhabi past the Jebel Ali Free Zone, look on the right and you will see, partly covered in sand, the remnants of the billboards that used to declare, “Where the Vision of Dubai Get's Built”.

I met a guy who claimed to have come up with that tag-line. He was a young American, very nice and very-very smart, based in New York working for a big-name branding company, with absolutely no clue of what Dubai is/was about. But he was making really good money, and that's fundamentally what everything is about, in Dubai.That particular “vision” was going to be bigger than Hong Kong. My conversation with the nice young American was a big factor in what made me decide to “retire” the part of my business that did real estate consulting.

Dubai's economy seems to be gaining momentum once again. But is it a temporary bump due to unrest in other parts of the Middle East or is the recovery on sounder footing? And, can Dubai be great again?

Dubai's economy, which was once the envy of its regional rivals, has struggled since the global financial crisis. But there are many indicators that suggest the emirate's economy has turned a corner.

While some critics may think Dubai has benefited from a 'flight to quality' as funds, tourists and business opportunities fled from Bahrain and Egypt to Dubai, the resugrence seems to be on sounder footing.

There are still many issues to contend with before this bump can transform into a full-blown recovery. The real estate sector and the country's debt obligation are issues that will be an overhang on the economy, but the country's unparalleled infrastructure, communciations and transportation, and all-round high quality of living could ensure that the emirate has gotten has gotten 'over the hump' and is on its way to recovery. But expect a few nasty surprises along the way, especially if some of the government-related enterprises (GRE) default or the Middle East's troubles escalate.

DIFC Investments, which operates Dubai's financial free zone, reported a narrower loss for 2010 on Sunday, weighed down by its struggling real estate portfolio and said it planned to sell certain assets this year.

The company, which runs the Dubai International Financial Centre, posted a yearly loss of $272 million, compared with $562m in 2009.

Revenue slipped to $146.3m last year, from $152.2m in the prior-year period.

The company plans to divest certain assets in 2011 and said it expects valuations to improve.

No recession in Egypt this year or Bahrain, just a reduction in growth, that is what the latest IMF regional forecasts would have us believe. The Oil States get a boost from higher oil prices and production rates, apart from Libya of course, but the growth forecast is not as high as you might expect.

Perhaps the IMF is trying to pour oil on troubled water, as if its forecasts can have some miraculous effect. But if they do have any sway with business and investors these misleading forecasts will simply misallocate capital and become yet another macroeconomic problem for the region.

The jailing this week of six men who embezzled more than Dh1.8 billion from Dubai Islamic Bank was the climax of a remarkable legal drama that had gripped the financial community for the past three years.

The six were each sentenced to 10 years, the heaviest penalties to be handed out to date in a fraud case. And they were jointly fined Dh1.8bn and ordered to return the cash they embezzled to the bank.

The hearings put a spotlight on corruption that prosecutors said had harmed both the bank and the Government. The vigour with which the case was pursued and the severity of the sentences signalled the authorities' determination to root out wrongdoers and make them pay for their crimes.

La Hoya Bay, the sprawling development on a man-made island off Ras al Khaimah, was a hot property in 2007.

"There was less and less available and prices were going up and up," says one investor, who asked not to be named. "So I jumped on the bandwagon."

More than 700 buyers, most from the UK, eventually put down more than Dh200 million (US$54.4m) in deposits in the Dh2.5 billion project, which was supposed to represent the next stage in development for the northern emirate.

The weak performance of a Premier Inn hotel built to accommodate passengers using the delayed Al Maktoum International Airport is hampering the company's performance in Dubai, the managing director says.

Nevertheless, the budget chain still manages to turn a profit in Dubai, he says.

"We do have one hotel that's bringing down the averages overall and will continue to do so until that part of Dubai develops a bit further," said Darroch Crawford, the managing director of Premier Inn Hotels, a regional joint venture between Premier Inn and Emirates Group.

Investors in the UAE will be watching for an array of catalysts this week including earnings results for the first quarter and the successes of two initial public offerings.

"Most investors have been happy with the earnings announcements from the banking sector coming so far," said Mohammed Ali Yasin, the chief investment officer at CAPM Investment in Abu Dhabi. "The results have helped calm worries, and the details provided gave a healthy indication that the economy is moving on the right track."

Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank's first-quarter profit more than doubled compared with the same period last year, while Emirates NBD showed a 27 per cent jump in profit. Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank's profit for the quarter rose 3 per cent.

The 146-member Tadawul All Share Index declined 0.2 percent, the gauge's largest loss in almost two weeks, to 6,710.56 at the 3:30 p.m. close in Riyadh. Three shares dropped for every two stocks that gained. The measure had advanced as much as 0.5 percent in intraday trading.

Qatar is expected to witness the largest real gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the world in 2011 at 20 percent, according to a Qatar National Bank (QNB) Capital review of the World Economic Outlook (WEO).

QNB capital said in a statement yesterday that in its latest WEO, published in April, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) maintained its global growth forecast at 4.4 percent for 2011 and at 4.5 percent for 2012, while cutting its real GDP growth forecasts for the Middle East North Africa (Mena) region in both 2011 and 2012 by 0.5 percent to 4.1 percent and 4.2 percent, respectively.

The reduction in the Mena region GDP growth forecasts was a response to the spreading social unrest in the region, rising sovereign risk premiums, and increasing import prices for commodities.

Qatar is one of the smallest - but richest - countries in the world, and has now emerged as a rising star of the Middle East, says The World Tonight's Robin Lustig in Doha.

It is a tiny nation with a population of just 1.7 million inhabitants, only 300,000 of whom are citizens. But put it in a list of countries measured according to per capita income, and Qatar comes top.

So farewell then, Aidan Birkett. The former chief restructuring officer of Dubai World recently went through the final formalities of selling his car, settling his bills and cancelling his UAE residence visa, before heading back to the UK last Thursday.

Having parted company with Dubai World last October, after he pronounced "job done" on the US$24.9 billion (Dh91.46bn) restructuring of the conglomerate's debts, Mr Birkett was obliged by UK tax rules to spend a few extra months in the emirate.

He used that time to see a bit more of the wider region, including a trip up Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, but is now back in his home in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, and able to reflect on his time with Dubai World.